That wasn’t a bad idea, actually.
Rosy color was rising in Cat’s cheeks, always a bad sign. “You wouldn’t even come to my house to have tea with my closest friend, and you know how much I want you to meet Josie!”
Lizzie had no interest in meeting a countess, let alone the wife of the notorious Earl of Mayne. She had read a book that described all of Mayne’s conquests, a scandalous tome entitled The Earl of Hellgate, or Night Scenes Among the Ton. She was no Puritan, but she didn’t approve.
Though honesty forced her to admit that she’d read every page of that memoir, and some of them twice.
Cat gave her a squinty frown. “Josie is my best friend, and you’ve repeatedly avoided meeting her. She will join us in two days, and if you refuse to get out of bed during her visit, I’ll swear I will drag you out by your hair.”
“Of course, I will greet Lady Mayne,” Lizzie said, exhausted by the whole conversation. She wasn’t looking forward to being the object of a countess’s sympathy.
Cat had always had interesting friends, even in school. She was a bit wild, and sometimes loud, but always interesting. But Lizzie never got along with her sister’s group: she was too shy, too aware of being a cit’s daughter, too much of a bookworm.
“You’re like some sort of hibernating hedgehog,” Cat said darkly. “You can’t hide in your chamber forever.”
Lizzie begged to differ. She had absolutely no problem hibernating until she felt like emerging, whether that happened tomorrow or never.
“You even dress as if you were on the wrong side of sixty,” Cat continued, when Lizzie didn’t respond. “What has changed you so much, Lizzie?” She dropped onto the settee. “You can’t pretend that you are grieving for Adrian. You are a rich widow with your whole life ahead of you, so why aren’t you enjoying yourself?”
Rich she wasn’t, though Lizzie didn’t feel like sharing the fact that she’d sold Adrian’s unentailed property and set up a fund for his son. Her solicitor had discovered that the boy had been dropped in an orphanage soon after Shady Sadie went on to her next protector.
The very thought made fury burn up her spine. She was angry at Adrian. And angry at Sadie. That rage made her start from her chair and blurt out what she’d never told anyone.
“I could forget the fact that Adrian married me for my dowry,” she said in a low voice, her fists clenching. “I could forget the fact that he justified his actions by announcing to all and sundry that Father was a cit who traded a wallflower daughter for a title. Do you want to know what I can’t forget, Cat? Do you?”
“Yes, I do want to know,” her sister said, her eyes steady. “What is possibly worth being so angry about that you plan to hide indoors for the rest of your life?”
Lizzie opened her mouth . . . and looked away. “It’s not worth discussing.”
“You must. It’s like poison inside you. You have to tell someone.” Cat reached up and pulled her back onto the settee beside her.
Lizzie had the feeling her sister was right, so she forced the words out of her mouth. “Four months after his heart seizure, Adrian decided it was time to consummate our marriage.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Cat make a sharp movement.
“He was not able to become stiff enough to do the deed.” The words proved as painful to say aloud as they were to think about.
“Let me guess,” Cat snarled. “He blamed you for that failure.”
“He was very nice about it, actually,” Lizzie said. “He was accustomed to a woman with a generous bosom. I got the impression that Sadie resembles the top half of an hourglass.”
Cat’s brows drew together. “Probably a dairy cow. He was such a dolt.”
“Adrian liked—” Lizzie broke off.
“Go on,” Cat said grimly. “Tell me every word the Royal Wart told you.”
“He just . . . you see, Sadie is quite vivacious.”
“He didn’t introduce you to Shady Sadie!” Cat’s voice rose.
“Oh, no!” Lizzie said hastily. “But he used to talk about her when . . . when he was home.”
That wasn’t often, especially after his mother died. The last year of their marriage she saw him twice.
“So what did he say about this paragon of womanhood?”
“It wasn’t so much about her, as about the difference between us,” Lizzie said, figuring she might as well make a clean breast of it. “He suggested a few things I might do to get him more aroused, and I declined. I felt incredible relief when it became clear that Adrian couldn’t manage an erection with me.”
“What woman wouldn’t?” Cat said, with a shiver.
“But since he died, I’ve grown to be so angry. And humiliated. I know it’s not rational.”
“I’d be livid. He wanted you to do things to get him aroused? It should have been the other way around. He should have knelt at your feet, thanking you for even considering bedding such a man as he.”
“He was my husband,” Lizzie said. “What was I supposed to do? Run home?” Those words hung in the air for a moment.
“You could have come to me.”
“Adrian wasn’t all that bad,” Lizzie said, reaching for her sister’s hand and giving it a squeeze.
“How dare he convince you that you were inadequate?” Cat looked as if she was ready to topple Adrian’s tombstone.
“Do you know what he reminded me of when he had his clothes off?” Lizzie said, realizing that she did feel better for blurting it all out.
Cat’s nose wrinkled. “I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Oh, not that part. The rest of him. Do you remember that fat, hairy pig that Mr. Murgatroyd kept in his back garden?”
“Ugh!”
“It wasn’t the belly as much as the attitude. Mr. Murgatroyd’s pig used to root around in the mud with the certainty that the world owed him a carrot every morning.”
“Why on earth would you believe it when a hairy trotter told you that you were unattractive, which is a complete and total lie, by the way?”
“I had two seasons. There was plenty of chances for other men to convince me of my charms.”
“Not after Adrian made it clear that you were his,” Cat said grimly.
“What do you mean?”
“Joshua told me that Adrian told his entire club—which included most of the young men in London—that he claimed you. So no, he had no competition in your second season, at least.”
Lizzie shrugged. “Adrian called me a tiresome country mouse, and he was right. I have no conversation, and no jokes, and I don’t even have breasts to speak of.”
Cat opened her mouth, but Lizzie raised her hand. “To go back to the subject, I’m sorry I declined to meet your friend the countess for tea. I just couldn’t imagine that we’d have much in common.”
“You will love her! We talk for hours whenever we manage to see each other.”
“She’s got a little girl, doesn’t she? And you have two little boys, not to mention your stepdaughter. I don’t have any children, and I’m not going to have any. Much though I adore my nephews, I’d rather be reading than talking about children.”
“Rather be reading!” Cat burst out, coming to her feet. “Is there anything in the world you’d rather do than read?”
Lizzie didn’t need to think about that twice. “No.”
“This is Adrian Troutt’s fault! You are exquisite, even now, when you’re too thin. You look just like Mother.” Cat put her hands on her hips and scowled magnificently, as if she could change the world by willing it so.
Lizzie looked up at her sister, making sure that Cat understood the importance of what she was about to say. “I will never again put my happiness in the hands of a man who may well be lying through his teeth. Never.”
“Not every man is a liar.”
??
?I have as much money as I need to live comfortably and buy books,” Lizzie said firmly. “I do not like dressing for dinner and eating seven courses. I have never been comfortable in polite society, despite Father’s decision to trade my happiness for a title.”
“You’re giving his actions the worst possible connotation. Papa genuinely thought that Adrian would not be able to resist you.”
Lizzie snorted.
“When it became clear that Adrian preferred Shady Sadie, particularly after he boasted all over town about the birth of his son, Papa was devastated. He had bet on the fact that Adrian would find you irresistible, and he lost.”
“I can’t imagine why he ever thought that plan would work.”
Cat sat down beside her again. “Because you’re beautiful, dear, even if you don’t see it.”
More than anything, Lizzie wanted to return to the warm nest of her little blue bedchamber back in London. After Adrian’s mother died, she had the back bedroom renovated and made it her own.
No more lying in a matrimonial bed that had never, even for one night, held more than one body. Luckily for her, the distant cousin who inherited Adrian’s estate had no interest in the house; she paid him a nominal rent.
But she had promised to stay with Cat for at least a fortnight. “All right,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll stay. But no matchmaking. Perhaps I’ll join you at dinner.”
By the time the evening rolled around, she was deep in her book. Eveline’s ancient fiancé had taken himself off to the Crusades, leaving his future bride vulnerable to kidnappers.
Lizzy didn’t come down to dinner.
Chapter Five
OLIVER ENTERED THE drawing room that evening with a mission. He meant to apologize to his hostess, and after that . . . well, after that, he meant to persuade Lizzie Troutt to eat her supper. Or at least enough to support a grown woman.
Not such a large goal.
When he was upstairs bathing—and later, when he was yelling at Hattie for fibbing about the dates of the house party—he couldn’t stop thinking about the little droop at the corners of Mrs. Troutt’s lush mouth. The way her cheekbones were drawn tight.
It wasn’t right.
Unfortunately, the lady was nowhere to be seen, but Lady Windingham was standing by the side of the room, talking to the butler.
He walked over, discovering that his hostess was eating olives, one after another, as if they were grapes. The girls were seated beside her, chattering between themselves.
“If you’ll forgive me,” he said, bowing, “I wonder if I might have a private word.”
“Why don’t we take a promenade?” She said, tucking her hand into his elbow. “At least it will stop me from eating every olive in the house. Do you ever find yourself craving one type of food so much that you would kill for it?”
“No,” Oliver said. He had the sudden, absurd thought that he might kill to see Lizzie Troutt naked.
“This room is so monstrously large,” Lady Windingham said cheerfully, “that I tell my husband we should set up a permanent cricket pitch at one end, though we’ve only got as far as the occasional game of croquet so far.”
Croquet indoors?
He pushed the thought away. And, for that matter, the question of what Lizzie Troutt would look like, naked and in his arms. “Lady Windingham, I accepted your invitation to this party, because I have long wished to apologize for my horrendous behavior when you debuted, years ago. I was, and remain, horrified at my dreadful attempts at being clever.”
She grinned at him. “Do you know, Mr. Berwick, if a certain gentleman had not backed away from his marriage proposal due to the notoriety of Mr. Darlington’s nicknaming me the ‘Wooly Breeder’—for Darlington long ago confessed to creating the label—my father would have married me off before the season was over?”
She paused.
“It would not have been a happy match?” Oliver asked.
“The gentleman in question was Viscount de Lesser.”
Oliver frowned. “He was a friend of my father’s, but surely—”
“The viscount died a few years ago, of a combination of gout and dropsy. I kept an eye on him, because until he took offense to marrying a ‘Wooly Breeder,’ he was quite enthusiastic about marrying me.”
“He must have been already seventy!”
“Seventy-three. My father is fond of calculating odds. He decided that the odds of my husband dying while I was still of breeding age were quite high. Therefore, he chose to trade a year or two of discomfort for the title of viscountess.”
It seemed bloody-minded to Oliver, but he could hardly say that aloud. What did he know of daughters, after all?
Still, irritating though Hattie could be, he would no more consider marrying her to an old man than to a beggar.
“It seemed reasonable to my father,” Lady Windingham said with a sigh. “Thank goodness Lord Windingham came along the next season. My father is inordinately proud of the fact that both of his daughters hold titles.”
Oliver spent most of his time in the north country and rarely bothered to enter polite society, but even he had heard of Troutt’s adoration for Shady Sadie, which had to have predated his marriage. “I see,” he murmured.
“My father knew of my brother-in-law’s relationship with Sadie Sprinkle,” the lady said, obviously guessing his thought. “He decided that Troutt’s inordinately large girth suggested that he would live only a year or two. He was wrong; my sister had to endure a flagrantly adulterous husband for over four years.”
“That is truly unfortunate,” Oliver said. He couldn’t think of any comment on the subject that wouldn’t cast a pejorative light on her father, so he said, “I gather you were saved from de Lesser’s attentions by Lord Windingham?”
“That is exactly right,” she said, giving him another one of her wide-mouthed smiles. “It’s family lore at this point, but the very first person I danced with in my second season was my future husband, Joshua. The previous spring he had been in mourning for his first wife and did not come to London.”
“So am I to understand that my callow remarks were in the service of fate?” Olivier said, a wave of relief coursing through his body.
“Exactly! I believe my husband will wish to thank you as well.”
“Fate cannot excuse the cruelty of my conduct,” Oliver said frankly. “I truly apologize, Lady Windingham. I’m sure I wounded you, and I am deeply regretful.”
“You were considerably younger than Darlington, weren’t you?”
“That is no excuse.”
“You’re being very nice about it, but Darlington told me a long time ago that it was entirely his doing.”
“If there is anything I can do to atone for what I did,” Oliver said, rattling off the sentence that Hattie had made him promise to utter, “you have only to ask.”
His hostess’s eyes narrowed, and she came to a halt. They had walked a considerable way, so far that the far end of the room seemed shrouded in twilight.
“Do you mean it?” she asked.
“Absolutely.” He was tired of feeling shame. It was an exhausting emotion.
“I have need of a knight errant, as it happens.”
What? She couldn’t possibly be asking for nightly privileges.
She read his eyes and burst into laughter. “You are quite handsome, Mr. Berwick, but I’m afraid that my husband absorbs all my attention.” She had charming laughter wrinkles beside her eyes.
Quite suddenly, Oliver discovered that he liked Lady Windingham. Really liked her. Not in that way, but in the way he used to like his sister before the Bible transformed her into such elevated—and judgmental—company.
“Now that I finally have a Lancelot, I have a quest for you,” the lady said.
“Anything,” Oliver said, meaning it.
“Dear me, I hope all this power doesn’t go to my head.”
“If I had met you your first season, I would have given Viscount de Lesser a run for his money.”
“My father thought first and foremost about titles, so I’m afraid it wouldn’t have worked. Besides, we wouldn’t have been happy.”
“No?”
“Joshua is as calm as the night. No matter what sort of fit I fly into, he is always steady. He’s my rock.”
“My qualifications on that front are untried,” he agreed, taking her arm again as they turned and began walking back toward the fireplace. “So how may I help you, Lady Windingham?”
“First of all, you’d better call me Cat. I can tell that we’re going to be great friends. And second, you’re going to help me with my sister.”
“With Lady Troutt?” he asked, startled.
“Lizzie is a widow, as you know. I want you to get her up on a horse, because she never rides any more, even though she used to love it. And I want you to make her laugh.”
It seemed he was right. It wasn’t natural for Lizzie Troutt to be so pensive.
“You have two days before everyone arrives, which should be enough,” she added.
“Is Lady Troutt grieving for her husband?” It seemed incredible, but stranger things had happened.
“Absolutely not,” Cat stated. “Adrian was a miserable cur, who displayed shameful disrespect for his wife.”
“I agree.”
“You are the perfect person to pull her out of the doldrums because you’re so clever. In fact, if you wanted to come up a nickname for Adrian, I would welcome it. Adrian the Anteater, for example.”
“I’m out of the business of calling people names,” Oliver said.
“Then tell her a funny joke. Lizzie used to scream with laughter at the sort of joke in which a pope dines with the king. Your charge is to make her laugh so hard she cries.”
Oliver frowned. He wasn’t a joking sort of man.
“I still remember one joke that made us laugh hysterically,” Cat said encouragingly. “ ‘Why are blind men like the philosophers Plato, Seneca, and Socrates?’ ”